34 THAT WAS NE. W YORK I T was hot and cloudy in New York City on the lllorning of Tuesday, July 26, 1938. Patroltllan Charles V Glasco, of the First District Traffic SUlllmons Squad, began his tour of duty at 8 A.M., his duty being to serve SUlll- lllonses on persons who were guilty of parking violations on Thirty-seventh Street between Fifth and Ninth Ave- nues. An allliable, rather rotund lllan of thirty-five and better than average heigh t, with sharp brown eyes and black hair quite thinned out on top, Glasco had been in the Police Depart- ment for fourteen years and was highly regarded by the other lllelllbers of his unit, Traffic C, as a teller of dialect stories. Glasco was proud of his Irish ancestry and sensitive because his sur- nallle was often thought not to be Irish. Whenever this happened, he would do a slow burn and then produce his lllelll- bership card in the Ancient Order of Hibernians, which he carried for just this elllergency. That Tuesday, Glasco was due to finish his tour of duty at 4 P.M. In W oodhaven, that lllorning, his wife, Margaret, had told hÎtll that there would be liver and bacon, one of his favorite dishes, for dinner. He was not feeling too spry; his sacroiliac had been paining hilll lately, and his back was strapped with adhesive tape. At noon, when he lllade his routine hourly check-in with his station from a call box at the corner of Thirty-seventh and EIghth A venue, he was ordered to report at once to Sergeant Murphy, who was at the corner of Fifth A ve- nue and Fifty-fifth Street, and lend a hand in easing a big traffic tieup there. As Glasco neared the intersection, he saw a staring crowd on the sidewalks, and on the street two hook-and-Iadder trucks, a rescue truck of the police Elllergency Division, three police radio cars, and an alllbulance. Sergeant Mur- phy was standing on the south steps of the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, at the northwest corner, lllopping his brow. "Take a look up there;' he said, point- ing at the Hotel Gothalll, directly across Fifty-fifth Street. The Gothalll's roof is two hundred and two feet above the sidewalk. On a ledge four floors be- low the roof and about seventy feet frolll the Fifth Avenue corner of the building, Glasco saw a hatless, coatless lllan stand- ing outside an open window, with his back against the edge of a stone architec- tural ornament of floral design, a yard wide and almost shoulder high, that protruded frolll the wall. The lllan at the lllument was facing westward, to- THE, MAN ON THE, LE,DGE, ward Sixth A venue As Glasco watched, a WOlllan leaned out the window to the right of where the lllan was stand- ing and beckoned to hilll. The lllan whirled in her direction, then crouched, holding on to the stone ornament with one hand and raising his other arlll to his head, as though to ward off a blow. Glasco, a lllan with an exceptional- ly fine lllemory, recalls that the Ser- geant said, "That'd be his sister, I guess. He's been on that ledge about half an hour now. Come out around eleven- forty. I wish to hell they'd get him in hefore he louses up all the traffic on Manhattan Islan.d." "Well, if they don't jump the first hour, they never jUlllp," Glasco said. "At least, that's what I've heard lllany a tÍ1lle frolll Elllergency Division guys that spent years working on ledge walk- ers. Why don't they grab him?" " C ' h ." h S " d an t get at 1m, t e ergean t sal . "He threatens to jUlllp every time a cop h . d " comes near t at wIn ow. "I'd get at him," Glasco said. "I'd stop being a cop for a while. I'd get at h " " 1m. "Well, maybe you would, at that," the Sergeant said. "You always was a pretty fair actor. It's worth trying, any- how. Go on up to Room 1714 and tell the lieutenant I sent you. See if you can get that poor loopy in off of that ledge. They tell me he's only a kid. Con him in off of that ledge and maybe we can have a little peace down here." T HE lllan on the ledge was John Willialll Warde, aged twenty-six, who lived with his parents in Southalllp- ton. His father, John A. Warde, was an employee of the Railway Express COlll- pany there. Young Warde had grad- uated frOlll high school just in time for the depression. He was a quiet, slender, good-looking boy, with thick, curly black hair. He was fond of sports, music, and poetry. In hIgh school, he had had the reputation of being llloody. For SOllle years, he had been a clerk in a Southampton bank, where he was known as an intelligent worker, though a bit peculiar at t1tlles. In July, 1937, he had tried to kill himself with a - ..., - - CLl . .. . .. i WE , ).1") ... .. . : .r ;....- l , ... knife. After he had recovered fro111 his wounds, he was COlll1llitted to the State Hospital, at Central Ishp, for observa- cion. Three lllonths later, in Novelllber, he was released. i\. notation on his dis- charge papers read, "The patient's manic-depressive psychosis seelllS to have arrested itself." Mr. and Mrs. Patrick A. Valentine, Jr., a warlllhearted couple in their lllid- thirties who had spent many SUlllmers in Southalllpton and knew the Wardes, hired John, after his release, as a COlll- panion for their two small sons and as a casual chauffeur and handYlllan. They hoped that a job in agreeable surround- ings would help hÍ1ll conquer his 1llel?ln- cholia and recover his self-confidence. The Valentines were well-to-do. Mr. ValentIne's father callle to this country from Scotland when he was a young lllan, went to work for Arlllour & Co., in Chicago, becallle its financial director, and lllarried the widow of Philip D. Arlllour, Jr. In 1910, he llloved his family to New York. He died in 1916. Patrick Valentine, J r, after his mar- riage, bought a SUlll1ller place in South- alllpton, which he called Valtllay. Mr. Valentine was associated with the Clara Laughlin Travel Service, which was organized by the indefatigable Midwest- ern maiden lady whose guidebooks had become altllost standard equipment for the American tourist. Eight days before J ohn Warde climbed out on the ledge of the Goth- am, he drove in his father's car to a drawbridge õutside Halllpton Bays, walked to the llliddle of the bridge, and stood gazing down at the water. His manner aroused the suspicions of the bridge tender, who chased hÍtll off the bridge, took the license nUlllber of his car, and inforllled the police of the inci- dent. They found John at his home, but as he had not lllade an attempt at sui- cide, they sÍ1llply gave him a talking to. The Valentines, thinking that a change of scene might help, decided to take him to Chicago for the weekend. John's twenty-two-year-old lllarried s.ister, Katherine, accolllpanied them. John swalll in Lake Michigan, saw the Cubs (his favorite ball club) play, and at- tended a concert in Grant Park. The Valentines and Katherine did every- thing possible to lllake things pleasant, but they couldn't cheer hÍ1ll up much. They got back to New York on Tues- day lllorning, at ten o'clock, and went to Room 1 714 at the Gotham, which the Valentines had been using as their city residence for the past year. Mr.